Dear Me,

Ten years ago, you boarded a plane to France with so much more baggage than what you’d actually packed you could barely walk, much less carry the load you’d allowed yourself to be burdened with for too many years to count. Until the moment your feet hit this soil, you’d perpetuated a lifelong farce to everyone you knew and loved, not the least of which was yourself.

Your life back then was an apparition filled with all the shiniest things a person could possess and the appearance of a picture-perfect family completely in sync with each other on every possible level. Little did you know that ten days later when that plane finally landed back in Dallas that “you” weren’t on it and would never be coming home again.

Meanwhile, all in the course of a relatively short jaunt, you met two complete and total strangers. Remember how you believed they were actual angels God had set on your path to help you begin the process of becoming acquainted with the other stranger you’d met on that trip – you? One of these days you should be brave enough to introduce those two strangers from your past and really speak your truths by the way, so consider this your official challenge!

At the end of the day, what I can tell you is that I find it no coincidence that you are back here in France, a decade later, celebrating your birthday with not only this amazing man who has brought you so much sweet joy and fullness that your words since meeting him have failed to find their way to paper, but more importantly – with YOU!

Everything has changed since the last time you were here and your life is unrecognizable! Your feet hit that soil with a steadfast determination to stop living a lie and start living an authentic life you could be proud of with the REAL you, no matter the cost, and cost you it did. How could you ever have known that despite your best efforts to salvage the life and relationships you already had, in order to see your resurrection to fruition you’d end up having to let so many things and people go? So, you became a living bomb that self-destructed during the process of peeling off that venomous black Spidey suit you’d been wearing all the while that had all but suffocated the life from you.

I’d like to think that if you could change this last ten years you wouldn’t have changed a thing, as in my heart I think you’ve always known that all of this had to happen for a reason. You found yourself. You found your voice … and your truths … and your many reasons. You know exactly who you are, how you got here, what things you’ve done right, and the many things you could have done better. You’re a perfectly imperfect beautiful disaster and perhaps a bit much for some people digest. You are YOU, nothing more, NOTHING LESS, and “what other people think of you isn’t any of your business anyway.” You’re a survivor, and a warrior, and a divinely appointed living QUEEN, and a true and genuine person. As long as your two babies back at home and that superman standing behind you in one of your favorite places on this Earth think that you’re their hero, who could ask for a better birthday present? HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO ME, Catherine Marie Williamson! It’s been so nice getting to know you.